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Pretty much astounded at how good the iP4S's camera is (pics incl)

F

fjrabon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 22, 2010
149
0
I'm kind of an intermediate 'photographer'. Use a Nikon D3100. So, today I took some test pictures with the new iP4S camera and a few of my friends who are much more serious and have much better cameras than me made a couple of comments like "I'm always astounded by what a bang for the buck you get with the D3100, not a pro level, but those are some dang fine pictures from a sub $1000 DSLR.

Problem is, they were from the iP4S.

I think I'm probably just going to give my point and shoot away at this point. There's really no need whatsoever for it.

298933_10100199123516686_1529036_48077119_415272690_n.jpg


300201_10100198937160146_1529036_48075692_661127475_n.jpg


312728_10100198936077316_1529036_48075691_994788857_n.jpg
 
That's what I am planning to do. Going to try to sell my P&S once I get my hands on the ip4s. Pics came out great!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

My pictures aren't coming out as good. Should I take my phone in to the apple store? Outside pics look great but inside pics look similar to my iP4.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I should add, I rarely use my flash indoors because my kids blink. Are those last two taken with your flash?
 
It's also hard to tell, but the 2nd picture was really low light and it's been cropped heavily as well, which only makes how well it came out more astounding. There's a little graininess on the white, but in low light plus heavily blown up? You've got to be kidding me with that kind of image quality.

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elaniemay said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I should add, I rarely use my flash indoors because my kids blink. Are those last two taken with your flash?
Click to expand...

no flash on any of those.

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elaniemay said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

My pictures aren't coming out as good. Should I take my phone in to the apple store? Outside pics look great but inside pics look similar to my iP4.
Click to expand...

the hardest thing with the iPhone camera is nothing to do with the camera, it's that it's extremely hard to take the picture without shaking the camera, which is going to have a bigger effect inside, since the shutter is open longer on interior pictures. The design of the phone (it is a phone first after all) isn't really conducive to holding it extremely steady.

Be EXTREMELY light when you press the shutter button and make sure to breathe out, snap, breathe in.
 
BigB82 said:
OP what settings did you have the camera on for each picture and how did you make the size big?
Click to expand...

I think they were all in HDR mode. I cropped and resized them in Aperture, but didn't otherwise touch them up.
 
Great pics!

I agree that the 4S camera is excellent for a cellphone, though I'm not selling my D300 anytime soon. Also agree that holding the phone steady when shooting in low light is a challenge.
 
I still think the phone needs some sort of optical zoom (even something like 4x) to really replace my Cybershot Point and shoot.
 
Phil A. said:
Great pictures. I love the 2nd one - it's brilliantly composed!
Click to expand...

Thanks! The amazing thing about that one is that it was shot from the same distance as the third one was, but is just cropped and blown up. Really surprised at how well it held up with that amount of blowing up and that little light. Really a testament to the image quality. A lot of times image quality doesn't matter as much as people think, but in low light when you're also blowing the picture up, it matters a lot and unless it's a really high quality image, the picture will fall apart in a hurry.
 
I too am shocked at the quality of the pictures on the 4S. Even indoor, no flash, semi low light turn out beautiful.

Beautiful dogs by the way! I am taking lots of pictures of my dog too. They make great subjects. :)
 
fjrabon said:
It's also hard to tell, but the 2nd picture was really low light and it's been cropped heavily as well, which only makes how well it came out more astounding. There's a little graininess on the white, but in low light plus heavily blown up? You've got to be kidding me with that kind of image quality.

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no flash on any of those.

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the hardest thing with the iPhone camera is nothing to do with the camera, it's that it's extremely hard to take the picture without shaking the camera, which is going to have a bigger effect inside, since the shutter is open longer on interior pictures. The design of the phone (it is a phone first after all) isn't really conducive to holding it extremely steady.

Be EXTREMELY light when you press the shutter button and make sure to breathe out, snap, breathe in.
Click to expand...

Thank you :) I will try this. I am sure it's my fault because I am usually trying to get my baby girl to smile at the same time as I'm taking the picture, so I'm sure I'm shaking the camera/phone somewhat.
 
In low light conditions, I find it helpful if you tap the area in photo with the lowest light to lock exposure, and then follow OP's tips to tap the shutter without any movements.

Usually iPhone will use the brightest spot for metering, which will make the rest of photo too dark in low light conditions. I never like the flash so I always try to take shots without it.
 
dontwalkhand said:
This calls for some sort of tripod accessory for iPhone and a self timer app.
Click to expand...

yeah, though that kind of defeats the purpose of a phone camera for me though. But for people where it's really their only camera, it could make a huge difference. For me, any time I'd carry around even a tiny tripod I'd just use my DSLR anyway.

I think the biggest issue is people don't realize how huge of a difference really concentrating on holding the camera steady can make if you want outstanding pictures.

The good thing about the software in the iP4S is that if you don't really care about outstanding pictures and just want to roughly capture the moment, it's good enough that you don't have to really concentrate on holding the camera steady and still get some 'really good pictures. But if you do really concentrate on holding the camera steady and pay attention to angles and lighting you can take some really amazing photos with this thing, if you want to.

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one thing that I think could really be awesome for the iP4S camera (or any of the iOS cameras for that matter) would be voice activated snapping.

for instance:

set a "speech activated 2 second delay"

Set up your camera: walk away to the point you set it up for, say "shoot" and then a 2 S delay (so it doesn't catch you closing your mouth after saying "shoot" and it snaps.

Or

"instant voice activated shooting" where you say shoot and it shoots with a minimal delay (both to process your voice, but also give you a second to steady your hand after vocalizing, instantaneous voice shooting would be bad anyway, as the vocalization would cause some shaking of the camera).

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steph280 said:
In low light conditions, I find it helpful if you tap the area in photo with the lowest light to lock exposure, and then follow OP's tips to tap the shutter without any movements.

Usually iPhone will use the brightest spot for metering, which will make the rest of photo too dark in low light conditions. I never like the flash so I always try to take shots without it.
Click to expand...

oh, awesome tip! I hadn't even considered that. Somebody should write a guide on how to take awesome photos with the iP4S. It takes great pics regardless, but if you learn a couple relatively simple tricks it can take good pics into the realm of astounding pics.
 
Love the dynamic range in the first picture. Seeing it I understand full well why you don't need your P&S anymore.
 
fjrabon said:
I think the biggest issue is people don't realize how huge of a difference really concentrating on holding the camera steady can make if you want outstanding pictures.
one thing that I think could really be awesome for the iP4S camera (or any of the iOS cameras for that matter) would be voice activated snapping.

for instance:

set a "speech activated 2 second delay"

Set up your camera: walk away to the point you set it up for, say "shoot" and then a 2 S delay (so it doesn't catch you closing your mouth after saying "shoot" and it snaps.

Or

"instant voice activated shooting" where you say shoot and it shoots with a minimal delay (both to process your voice, but also give you a second to steady your hand after vocalizing, instantaneous voice shooting would be bad anyway, as the vocalization would cause some shaking of the camera).
Click to expand...

...it'd be easier (and currently possible) to just use the earphones as a remote shutter release.
 
After seeing these pictures, I am deff going to give this camera a shot this weekend. Hello New England fall. :)
 
cyks said:
...it'd be easier (and currently possible) to just use the earphones as a remote shutter release.
Click to expand...

Dude, awesome tip. Just tried that out. I never even thought about the fact that volume up for shutter now meant that you could use your headphones like a remote. Thanks!

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matrix07 said:
Love the dynamic range in the first picture. Seeing it I understand full well why you don't need your P&S anymore.
Click to expand...

yep, anybody who knows photography would know how awfully murdered that first pic would come out in a lesser camera. You've got direct sunlight right next to shadows, but both parts came out really well. Awesome for built in HDR. Normally you'd be spending hours in photoshop trying to put together an HDR photo like that correctly. It more or less nailed it, despite the fact that the swing was swinging off to the side (which shows up in a tiny bit of blurriness, but since that wasn't the focus, it seems right anyway).
 
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